Amazon deal off; MX Player eyes funding

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₹1,000 crore, before foraying into the video streaming space. It was relaunched as an ad-supported video streaming application. The firm raised around $111 million in a funding round led by Chinese Internet giant Tencent in 2019, has not been able to generate enough cash for a while to fund its expansion.

Times Internet has been on a selling spree of some of its businesses. It sold its short-video platform MX Takatak to Temasek-backed ShareChat in February 2022, followed by Dineout to Swiggy in May in a stock deal, and in December it sold MensXP and iDiva, and an influencer marketeer Hypp to Mensa Brands, the same year. Moreover, things have changed drastically in India’s AVoD streaming space.

Not only are new players like JioCinema offering content largely for free, several other entities have joined the bandwagon, including Amazon itself that operates a free streaming service miniTV. A platform like Disney+Hotstar too is offering premium sports events at no cost to mobile users. Further, the losses are massive.

Unlike TV, where pay channels garner maximum viewership and advertising, companies like Google and Facebook take up 60-70% of all digital advertising. “Market dynamics have changed in the past few years. Plus, masses in tier-two and tier-three towns whom ad-led platforms were focusing on, have not emerged as great paying customers," said Karan Taurani, senior vice-president at Elara Capital Ltd.